Please take your diseased parts away from my television screen. There appears to have been a severe outbreak of oversharing, and I find myself plagued by shows that delight in broadcasting the kind of medical issues that belong in a consulting room, rather than a living room.

I am not, for instance, a fan of Embarrassing Bodies, the inexplicably popular Channel 4 show in which ailing punters agree to be examined by a doctor on camera. Many people seem to delight in ewing and wretching at unmentionable afflictions through their fingers, with little regard for the vulnerable patients going through the excruciating ordeal. But I would genuinely rather have permanent nits than watch said parade of poxy parts. So I switch over.

You'd think, though, at 11am on a weekday morning you would be safe from deranged exhibitionists flaunting their complaints. But no. This Morning's Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby recently interviewed a man who'd just undergone penis enlargement surgery, complete with before and after pictures. Big ones. His deflated and newly expanded old chap filled the screen as I flicked channels after In the Night Garden. Oh look, I thought as I put my mid-morning banana to one side, a penis on daytime TV. Isn't that a pip.

It is not This Morning's first offence. There was the live vasectomy which I only need to start describing to men who annoy me, for them to swiftly run away, covering their ears. And then there was Paul Ross's prostate exam. It laudably raised awareness of a difficult subject. But the face of Schofield as he looked everywhere but the area in question as Dr Chris Steele cast his expert eye (and digit) thence will stay with me for all the time that is to come.

As the bounds of taste and decency shrink ever-subtly back, it seems that it's now OK – on either side of the watershed – to show graphic close-ups of wangs, etc if there is some spurious medical justification. (The Mull of Kintyre rule still applies though, thank heavens.) I'm not madly prudish but TV is awash with pathologically un-shy people exposing themselves for no obvious reason. Give me hours and hours of emotional flashers on Big Brother, rather than these bizarre limelight hoggers presenting their pustules for national inspection. What can they hope to gain?

Take Embarrassing Bodies. Patients with cringe-inducing problems in often private parts of their anatomy have an on-camera consultation in a brightly lit TV studio with one of three medics. Beforehand they explain the problem and how it affects their confidence. Then they strip off for the cameras. The idea that someone too embarrassed to go to their own GP would then happily disrobe in front of millions is bonkers. Who are these people? Where does this idea come from that only a TV expert can cure your ills? We've got an NHS for pity's sake. Even an over-stretched GPs' surgery is better than the full public humiliation on offer here.

Michael Mosley has just given us a new BBC4 show in which he helpfully invited a camera into his own guts so we could really see the digestive process up close. Although unquestionably fascinating (if you could stomach it) it did beg the question, what's left for the TV cameras to plunder? Thank heavens Gillian McKeith is now mercifully absent from our screens after years spent sticking her Bic in Tupperwares of other people's poo and trying to match it to a Dulux colour chart. But people watched it. You probably watched it. And I can't think for the life of me why.

You watch a horror film because it's fun to enjoy fear safely, getting your adrenalin pumping without actually having to be chased by a murderer. But why on earth would you want to look at someone's sub-gusset paraphernalia when you've just had dinner? Are these shows really raising awareness of taboo maladies and emboldening a notoriously awkward British public to see their own GP? Or are we just Victorians copping a look through the bars of a freak show? My money's on the latter.

Television & radio

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